The highly anticipated first-person platformer Mirror's Edge has arrived on next-generation consoles to a mixed reception. While the art direction and fluid controls gave the game a unique look and energy, the ham-handed story and awkward combat sequences often made playing it a chore. "Good try, and better luck next time" seems to be the critical consensus, and one more promising gambit for big-studio productions gets buried in its own confused execution.

At least one unimpeachably good thing has come out of the project, however: Brad Borne's Mirror's Edge 2D. With the support of publisher Electronic Arts, Borne has combined the ludicrous physics of his own Fancy Pants Adventure with the stylized world of Mirror's Edge to produce a joyful ode to side-scrolling platforming. We previewed a demo build of the game last November, and this is the full version finally, including 3 levels and a couple of time trial modes (the site promises more features in the future). For many of us, this is what the commercial 3D game should have been. Just give this a plot (hold the ham) and a few more urban playgrounds to explore, and it would be a dream game. As it is, it's a marketing tool done absolutely right.

You play Faith, who is a sort of rooftop-leaping anti-establishment courier in a dystopian future. All you have to do is run, jump, swing, and slide from one end of the level to the other, but there are messenger bags and wee little Mirror's Edge logos to collect if you crave self-reflexive bling.

If you find a red skylight, try crashing through it to enter a curiously spartan room with a secret file, guarded by a machine gun-toting government tool. Hide behind things when he's shooting, and sprint for the next source of cover when he reloads. You don't have any combat moves, so just run, Faith, run. If you collect all the secret files, you unlock a mode that lets you speed run all the guard rooms in one go.

Traverse your environment using more-or-less standard platforming controls—the [Arrow Keys] move you around, and [S] or [/] jumps. If your keyboard is like mine, [/] won't serve you well; it fails to register when I'm holding down two other keys. Pay attention to the notes posted about—they explain how to perform the more difficult maneuvers, like swinging from hooks and clambering up walls.

Analysis: Mirror's Edge 2D is an attractive game, even if the atmosphere rings a bit hollow without the accompanying story. The background art (including work by Mastermind: World Conqueror's Mike Swain), gives the requisite sea of skyscrapers an interesting off-kilter look, and Faith's animation is smooth and convincing.

More than anything, though, this is a showcase for Brad Borne's ever-strengthening sense of classic level design. Though you'll have to slow down if you want to collect every messenger bag and trinket, the real heart of the game is in running full tilt. Once you're familiar with the controls, it's surprisingly easy to hurl yourself around without falling. Occasionally the hand-drawn art style makes it hard to understand which walls are solid, and the occasional curved surface doesn't handle intuitively, but most of the time the game world feels chunky and reliable, perfect for wall-jumping and launching off of ramps with legs pinwheeling.

Unable to take shelter in the anything-goes abstractness of the Fancy Pants world, Borne has made everything into physical, justifiable objects; the illusion that you are leaping between rooftops and crane arms really adds some gut to the process of falling to your death. I found the vertical maze of the sewer level a bit hard to swallow, but once you put a sewer level in a game ostensibly about parkour, you're already meddling with the occult forces of banality, and things can only end strangely.

My only real quarrel with Mirror's Edge 2D is with the main character, who compared to Fancy Pants Man, has the humor and joie de vivre of a landed mackerel. Faith makes up for her lack of orange bell-bottoms with popping ruby trainers and a kicky hairdo. She should be five by five, living entirely large. So why the constant grimness? Even an oppressive authoritarian city has room for smiles, especially for the people standing on the rooftops.

50 Comments

Woot! Finally released! I love Mirror's Edge for Xbox 360, but don't nave cash to buy it. Half the experience for free! xD
And about the game: Great!
BTW: On the official site, there's just a note:
Updates are in-progress. Please check back later.
Maybe they are trying to deal with traffic?

Okay guys, we're linking to a previous version of the game while the main site is down. So you can play now, but you won't be able to save your progress, and there may be some bugs in this version still.

It works now. But I can't get the wall jump down. The timing has to be so precise, or maybe I'm doing it wrong. It works about half the time, but the other half I just fall to my doom. I'll just put this one down and never look back. It's a shame... I still think it's cool, but not my thing, I guess.

JohnnyCaps - Are you holding the arrow key towards the wall when you jump? If you press away from the wall, you'll just fall off, but if you press toward the wall so you're sliding, and then press jump, it should work.

It seems that all of the links -even the previous version one- links to the http://www.mirrorsedge2d.com/ which is the official one and says something about updates.
So have I misunderstood something or is there somewhere a working version of this game?

At the moment you can play a fairly recent version by following the "demo build" link mentioned in the second paragraph of the review. You still can't sign in but you should be able to play the new levels.

On the second level I am stuck. I go back and forth through the level and climb to the very top and go to the right and then I'm stuck. There is a gap and a very tall wall that I can't get to the top of. There is no wall opposite it so I can't wall/jump climb to get to the top.

From the gargoyle you drop down then jump back left across several gaps. There is then a big jump left to a bendy steel bar - swing along this until you can drop down onto a metal platform with a red-coloured ramp on the right.

Then do a big jump to the right to a very small triangular platform followed by another jump rightwards to an orange wall and then to an air vent. If you miss any of these you're dead.

Thanks for your patience, everybody who was patient. The main site is finally up and running. You should be able to play the time trials and save your progress now, but the game is still labeled as Beta, so I'm not personally guaranteeing anything.

This is loads of fun -- I'm stuck at the gargoyle too, but will try jimbog's suggestion sometime when I have more time. And as Psychotronic says, this is some nice level design (so that even a klutz like me can do cool stuff). Hats off to Brad.

I just can't get the one by the first red "glass trapdoor". It's to the left, and too high to just jump and reach. I've been running all over the place trying to find how to get it - even the jump that you get coming out the trapdoor doesn't do it.

So please some, make me look like an idiot and tell me the very obvious way it's done!

Why does it say "Kiddo, sometimes you have to have a little faith" on the first level where you

jump down onto the elevator I-beam for a satchel?

Shouldn't it be "Kiddo, sometimes you have to make a leap of faith? Isn't that the obvious pun?

No, really, this is extraordinarily entertaining and I keep replaying it. One of the interesting things, to me, is that it has all sorts of detours and pathways, and one of the criticisms I've seen of the console game is that it keeps railroading you onto a single path.

woo, I unlocked baddie rush mode,
It helps that you have some experience before the review

Baddie rush mode is a combination of all the evidence locations, in order, without the levels you find them in, basically, the goal is to get the most evidence you can in one round, without getting killed, as that can set you back, so its like a clocked mode with simultaneous evidence rounds, kind of like the other unlockable mode, except without choice .

You can recollect all the evidence in the other unlockable mode, allowing you to find stuff you missed, which gets you baddie rush mode all the more faster, I would recommend a mirrors edge account though, just in case.

I'm missing one bag, and the first red skylight. I can only find one red wall, the one with the checkpoint next to it, and I can't find a single skylight anywhere near it.

The bag I'm missing is in the bottom right part, I think it's somewhere under the exit. I've noticed it and I've been able to get down on the same level as it a couple of times, where the wires at the beginning are, but only by luck so I don't know how to get down there from the exit or the gargoyle, or the red wall with the checkpoint, which are all my landmarks.

-directory, and the cookie/save would be the file in there named "(swf_file_name).sol".
In this case, you could also thoroughly search your harddisk (using for instance properly configured regular Windows Search) for a file named

MirrorsEdge2d.sol

This file can then be backed up to a different place, i.e. your desktop, and used to overwrite the cookie the next time you want to continue your game, just in case some cookie cleaner threw it out. Disclaimer:untested on Windows7 and Vista.

okay, so that same part with the gargoyle as mentioned before. went down, jumped off the ramp onto that little piece of wall and then wall walked, but for some reason, i'm always just short of the air vent. i'm pretty sure i just suck at this game, but what else could cause this? thankssss! :)

I can't for the life of me get 3 cyote symbol things, it's like they don't exist. I checked EVERY possible spot, I am tempted to restart again like I did but I am stuck to 153/156 of them, as always, I found 2 folders and 6 bags. Why can I not find that last set of 3 notes? Is there an image of the full map so I can actually zoom in some spots and find this? PS: The red billboard under finish, I did not need that peice of junk, just getts ya killed.

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